A rabidly anti-gun Hawaiian legislator is sponsoring a blatantly unconstitutional bill that would force gun owners to pay insurance on their firearms and re-register their firearms with the state every five years.

Hawaii gun owners would be required to have insurance for their firearms and renew their gun registrations every five years under a bill introduced Wednesday at the State Legislature, proposals that gun advocates said are unneeded and would have a chilling effect on constitutional gun rights.

The proposal, introduced by State Sen. Josh Green (D – Kona, Ka’u) would require gun owners to obtain firearms liability insurance from private insurance companies. Hawaii would be the first state in the country to enact such a requirement, if lawmakers and the governor approve of the law.

“I don’t want to take people’s guns away from them but I want people to take full responsibility,” said Green, an emergency room physician at Kohala Hospital on the Big Island.

Mr. Green is lying. Mr. Green is attempting to make it cost-prohibitive to own a firearm. He’s just not honest enough to admit that in public.

Green likens the requirement to car insurance.

“They have to pay insurance so that if they’re in a collision and they hurt someone else who’s an innocent bystander, it’s covered. Just like with guns, if a gun falls into the wrong hands or if there’s an accident, just an accident, it makes a lot of sense to me that we have that extra level of responsibility,” Green said.

Car insurance only covers accidents, not crimes intentionally committed with cars. If someone gets in a wreck due to an accident and there is property damage or a death, then the insurance company will pay out for that incident. Insurance companies will bot pay for intentional crimes.

Put bluntly, no insurance companies would insure gun owners under such a scheme, as firearms and insurance industry experts make clear.

Bill Richter, secretary of the Hawaii Rifle Association, said, “Any time you mandate something on a core constitutional, fundamental right, it has the effect of chilling that right and the exercise thereof, so we really don’t think it’s a good idea.”

Richter and insurance experts said homeowners and renters insurance would already cover accidents involving someone’s firearms, even if gun incidents happen outside their home. Purposeful criminal activity would not be covered by liability insurance of any kind, Richter said.

Green’s proposal would also require gun owners to renew their registrations every five years. Right now, that gun registration is good for life without taking into consideration changing medical or mental conditions of gun owners.

“Imagine if someone has become blind over the years, should they have a gun? Imagine if someone’s had psychiatric illness from drug addiction,” Green said.

Mr. Green’s intent is to push an insurance scheme that no insurance company would insure in hopes of making it impossible for people to legally own firearms.

He could have simply stated, “I hate guns, I hate gun owners, and I want you all disarmed,” but that would require the kind of honesty that this Hawaiian state senator apparently lacks.